Chapter 5: Violation and Healing

Three days later, Kate was doing laundry when she found Timmy’s phone on the bathroom counter. He must have left it there when he showered before leaving for work. She picked it up, intending to put it in his room, when the screen lit up with a notification.

A message from someone named “Jessica” on a dating app Kate didn’t recognize: “You’re such a good listener. I feel like I can tell you anything.”

Kate’s stomach dropped. She knew she shouldn’t look. Knew it was an invasion of privacy. But something—instinct, maternal concern, or maybe just the knowledge that Timmy was capable of terrible things—made her swipe open the phone.

His passcode was still his birthday. He’d never changed it.

The dating app opened, and Kate’s blood ran cold. The profile wasn’t Timmy. It was someone named “Marcus”—using photos Kate recognized as some guy from Timmy’s high school, someone who’d been popular and athletic. The bio was full of lies: software engineer, loves hiking, looking for something real.

Kate scrolled through the messages. Dozens of conversations with different women, all following the same pattern. Timmy—Marcus—would be charming, sympathetic, vulnerable. He’d get them to open up, to trust him, to share intimate details about their lives. Then he’d ask for photos. Sometimes the women would send them. Sometimes they’d refuse and he’d get angry, calling them teases, saying they’d led him on.

Kate felt sick. But she kept looking, compelled by horrified fascination.

She found other profiles. Other fake identities. Other women being manipulated.

Then she found the folder.

It was labeled “Private” and password protected, but Kate knew Timmy. She tried his birthday again. It opened.

Videos. Dozens of them.

The first few were recordings of video chats—women who thought they were talking to someone real, who’d been convinced to undress, to touch themselves. Timmy had recorded them all without their knowledge.

Kate’s hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped the phone.

She kept scrolling, each video worse than the last. And then she found one that made her stomach heave.

The thumbnail showed her bedroom. Her bed.

Kate’s finger hovered over the play button. She didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know. But she had to.

The video started. It was dark, filmed from the doorway of her bedroom. Kate could see herself in the bed, asleep, wearing the oversized t-shirt she usually slept in. The camera moved closer, shaky, and then Timmy came into frame.

Kate watched in horror as her son—her baby, the boy she’d raised—pulled down his sweatpants. His penis was small and already hard, and he started stroking it, his breathing heavy in the audio. He was standing right next to her bed, masturbating while filming her sleeping form.

Kate wanted to stop watching. Wanted to throw the phone across the room. But she was frozen, trapped in the nightmare of what she was seeing.

Timmy’s breathing got faster, more desperate. His hand moved quicker on his small cock, and then he was coming, his cum spurting onto Kate’s sleeping body—onto her shoulder, her arm, the sheets beside her.

The video ended.

Kate ran to the bathroom and vomited.

She knelt on the cold tile floor, her whole body shaking, tears streaming down her face. She’d been violated. By her own son. In her own bed. While she slept, trusting and vulnerable.

How many times? How many times had he done this?

The rage that followed the nausea was white-hot and all-consuming.

Kate grabbed the phone and stormed to Timmy’s room. She didn’t care that he wasn’t home. She started pulling his things out of drawers, out of the closet, throwing them into garbage bags. Clothes, games, everything. She wanted it all gone. Wanted him gone.

She was still packing when she heard his car in the driveway.

Timmy came through the front door, and Kate met him in the living room, his phone in her hand.